Announcements and Developments
This page tracks recent and upcoming changes to the Bittensor protocol and other major events in the Bittensor ecosystem.
Sub-Subnets (Major Feature Launch)
Status: Ready for deployment on September 12, 2025
- What: Sub-subnets allow subnet owners to apportion emissions across multiple sub-subnets, each running Yuma Consensus independently
- Key Features:
- Enables up to 8 sub-subnets (IDs 0-7) within each main subnet for multi-task validation
- Fully backward-compatible with existing miners and validators via sub-subnet ID 0
- Each sub-subnet has its own weight matrix and independent emissions
- All validators participate in all sub-subnets with identical stake weights
- Miners automatically participate in ALL sub-subnets when registering for a subnet
- Emissions are divided evenly, but subnet owners can configure proportions.
- First version focuses on core functionality with additional features planned based on community feedback
Hyperparameter Rate Limiting
Status: WIP
- What: Prevents subnet owners from changing hyperparameters too frequently
- Rules: Cannot change hyperparameters in last 10 blocks of a tempo
- Purpose: Prevent exploitation where subnet owners kick off root validators to take full incentives
- Implementation: Applies 7,200-block rate limit to prevent subnet owner exploitation
Child Key Fee
A percentage fee will be deducted from emissions bound to validator hotkeys through a child hotkey relationship. This is designed to more highly incentivize validators who perform validation work, over child-key-only validators. It is being gradually rolled out to reduce surprise for the community and allow validators to adjust.
Status: Implemented (Merged)
- Plan:
- Start at 1% (September 10)
- 30-day delay
- Increase by 1% per day for 17 days
- Final rate: 18%
Changes to the Subnet Registration/Deregistration Process
Status: Ready for deployment on September 16, 2025
- Key Changes:
- Subnet limit remains at 128 initially with no new registrations available immediately
- Immunity period reduced from 6 months to 4 months from registration block
- Network rate limit increased to 3 days (from 2 days) between registrations
- Initial lock cost set at 1,000 TAO with standard linear decay mechanism
- First deregistrations available approximately September 23 (one week after deployment)
Auto-Staking for Miners
Status: Implemented (Merged)
- What: Miners can automatically stake their mining income to a validator of their choice
- Implementation:
- New extrinsics
set_coldkey_auto_stake_hotkey
andget_coldkey_auto_stake_hotkey
- Set per coldkey, affects all miner hotkeys
- No transaction fees required
- Reduces sell pressure by allowing automatic delegation of mining rewards
- Event emission system being added to distinguish mining vs staking rewards for proper accounting
- Requires CLI support for configuration and management
- New extrinsics
Registration Fee Controls
Status: Deployed
- What: Subnet owners can configure neuron registration fees
- Implementation:
- Subnet owners can configure neuron registration fees between 0.1 and 1 TAO